


Threads

by Kerryl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Manipulation, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 04:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14947500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerryl/pseuds/Kerryl
Summary: The war has ended. A baby has been marked a hero. But there is more to be done.One November night in Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore contemplates the future.





	Threads

Last night, they murmur, Voldemort was defeated.

Last night, they whisper, a baby boy survived the Killing Curse.

Tonight, the wizarding world raises their glasses in hushed celebration, smiling that the war is over and He Who Must Not Be Named is gone.

Tonight, across the British Isles, weary fighters sag in relief. And grief.

Tonight, in Hogwarts, children and teachers who remember their Head Boy and Head Girl mourn in silence over two bright lives cut too short and a baby left orphaned.

Tonight, somewhere, a young man leaves his undercover post in a pack of werewolves, to pour himself a Firewhiskey and remember his lost friends.

Tonight, a group of Ministry officials chase an angry young man to charge him with eleven murders and sentence him without trial.

Tonight he stands in the room alone. The lights flicker. Harry Potter is with his aunt and uncle, left on their doorstep like a packaged delivery. In the morning Mrs. Dursley will find him, a baby with a new lightning-shaped scar on his forehead and a letter tucked in his blankets, lying among the milk bottles. Lily’s sister and brother-in-law are Muggles. _Of the worst sort_ , Minerva’s voice adds angrily. No matter. The blood protection should last. The child must be kept alive to kill Voldemort.

Because Voldemort is alive still. Oh yes, most certainly he is alive. The Horcruxes made sure of that. And he will return. Lily’s protection of her son was powerful, yes, but not quite enough to finish off the dark wizard once and for all.

Dark wizards, he muses, are difficult to defeat. How quickly a gifted boy – so much potential, so much charm – can become the fear of the wizarding world…

He sees strings, laid before his eyes, painstakingly accumulated over the years. They’re threads, really. On each a puppet. Or rather a person. Each holding a piece, a scrap of information, a certain power, a potential to carry out a designated task. These threads – these _people_ – can be arranged to defeat Voldemort. An exoneration here, a hiring there, a word with the Minister. Quite easily. A net, to catch Voldemort and carry him to his ultimate defeat and death.

Ah, but what beauty is there in a net? A certain beauty of strength in simplicity, perhaps. But he has a decided preference for intricacy. Why settle for a net when you can _create_ something? Something beautiful, something delicate, something marvellous. Something woven, perhaps. Or something knitted. After all, he does so love knitting patterns.

His fingers twitch to begin, but these threads do not lie on his desk to be touched, nor will they be manipulated by his hands. No, these threads will be looped and plaited and plucked and drawn through one another by his words. Much more beautiful, really. Requiring real skill and subtlety.

Tonight, Harry Potter lies sleeping in a bundle on a doorstep in Surrey. The first thread has been laid. Time to begin, he thinks, reaching out to stroke the feathers of his sleeping phoenix. Blue eyes glitter from behind half-moon spectacles.  
In the near-darkness, Albus Dumbledore smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This tiny fic came out of me thinking, "Why were Dumbledore's plans so complicated?" It might be a little OOC, but I always imagined that however honest and for-the-greater-good Dumbledore's motives supposedly were, there was also emotional detachment. Maybe he just liked to pull the strings.


End file.
